Election Day

Today is April 22nd, South Africa’s national election day. Since it is a national holiday, everything is closed except for touristy things so some friends and I grabbed lunch at the V&A waterfront and have retreated to start one of our favorite afternoon activities: watching drug dealers. Yes, as the rest of the country is lined up for blocks to vote in South Africa’s fourth democratic election, we are inside watching the wonderful American television show Weeds while keeping tabs on election results via internet.

Even though the African National Congress (Nelson Mandela’s party, and the winner of every election since the end of Apartheid) is expected to win by a landslide, the fight for votes also affects how the parties are represented in parliament. Some members of the ANC recently broke off to create the Congress of the People (COPE), so it should be interesting to see how much support they garner today. The ANC’s president is Jacob Zuma (I went to a rally of his some months ago), most journalists in SA and elsewhere tear him to pieces in the press, but his supporters are die hard. Here’s a really great article about the political state of South Africa: http://www.newsweek.com/id/194606